Today is Mother's Day, and my super-thoughtful husband "bought" (meaning we both decided) me a Grace SR-2 quilting frame for my Brother PQ 1500SL machine!
I was really excited until I had to start figuring things out, like ideal thread tension, foot height, speed, quilt tension, quilt height, etc., since my thread kept skipping and breaking. A lot. I even did some FMQ on the machine by pushing a sample quilt around under the needle, just to make sure it still worked. It did. But I learned that I just need to slow waaaay down on the frame, and I had to adjust the afore-mentioned tensions, one at a time. Once I did that, my practice designs started getting better, with only a very occasional skipped stitch, which is still driving me nuts! But then, as I was just starting to get into my quilting groove, my machine started just turning off randomly. I oiled it, and gave it and me a break and decided to make my Bloom block.
Yes, I'm still plugging away at my Bloom quilt..I think I'm 7 weeks/blocks behind Lori at this point. As I mentioned in my previous post, I will be replacing the "X" shaped blocks with a design of my own making. Block 9 is supposed to be this:
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| Credit: "A Bee In My Bonnet". Click the pic for Lori's tutorial. |
Instead, I'm going to make a patchwork flower, like this:
So, here's my applique process using Lite Steam-a-Seam2:
Pick fabrics, trace the templates onto the SAS2, cut out the shapes, stick them to the wrong side of the fabric, cut them precisely, peel off the paper backing, and stick the shapes to the background fabric. This time, I had to sew some fabrics together for the patchwork so I could then cut out the circle shape and the leaves:
The purty patchwork flower, all ready to applique:
I did my blanket stitch around everything, except for the zig-zag on the stems, picked out some borders, and here is my Block 9:
I think it's really cute, if I do say so myself! :-)
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